Tag: men and women

The woman to the right if following me on Twitter; or is she? After all, the name next to the image on Twitter isn’t a male or female name; it’s the name of a business. Or at least something that I assume is supposed to be some kind of business, because all the posts coming from the account are sales links.

She’s “following” me

I’m not following this account, but I went to take a look since it’s following me, and it has almost 5,000 followers, and overwhelmingly it’s men following the account. Trust me, not all of those men are interested in the product, and probably aren’t paying any attention to the posts. They saw the picture of the comely young lady, who’s very attractive, and just automatically followed the account.

She’s “following” me as well

It’s no wonder women think many men are pigs. We often do tend to follow very pretty and shapely women wherever they pop up, and sometimes we just can’t help ourselves, can we? After all, the images are the perfect fantasy of what we think women should be, even though we know that, for the most part, these women don’t look like this all the time, and they’re certainly not going to be interested in most of us. Not only that, but we’re not meeting any of these women with images like this. There are plenty of other attractive “real” women to interact with on both Twitter and Facebook, women who actually have brains and minds and can and will talk to us.

Cosmopolitan

And yet, I’m still left with this thought that if men are such pigs, then what are women? I mean, look at this cover from Cosmopolitan, a magazine geared towards women. If this image would be considered as a fantasy image for men, what is it considered for women? If it’s supposed to show women what they can be, does that mean the women who buy it don’t feel they’re already the women they can be?

Marie Claire

Here’s another one, Marie Claire, which is a bit more international, yet has Beyoncé with a little bit of cleavage hanging out. This is a magazine geared towards women; what does this say to the women who are encouraged to buy it? And if a man picked it up, why is he considered a pig? I mean, have you ever walked by the counters at the grocery store? All the magazines geared towards women have pictures like this on them? I’ve seen the guys stop to look, but never pick one up for the fear of how women looking at them might react. Yet women pick them up and buy them; what’s the double standard mean here?

Fitness

Not that I mind looking at Kelly Ripa in a bikini showing her fit body, but it does beg the question that I can’t answer; why wouldn’t magazines geared towards women have either men or other types of pictures on them? I actually understand the fashion magazines, but these other types of magazines?

Rena Mero

What it all comes down to is marketing, plain and simple. Studies have shown that when it comes to marketing, men and women actually like looking at the same thing, which is bodies that become the fantasy for them in some fashion. It’s like the quote the female wrestler Rena Mero always said in the ring: “Women want to be me, men want to be with me.” Both sides can deny it as much as they want to, but the proof is in the pudding (I’ll have to learn where that phrase came from one of these days).

I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. I’m not decrying any types of images on magazines. I’m certainly not saying women are pigs, and I’m taking men, well, most men anyway, from the category of being pigs also. What I’m saying is that the best marketing sometimes seems to be to go after the basis instincts of people, understanding the triggers, and hitting them hard.

I had a guy who admitted to me that about 15 years ago his company was just doing “okay”, and what they did was hired 3 young, pretty women right out of college and sent them around 4 states to market their business to hospitals. He said they almost always were let in without an appointment and at least got to talk to CFOs, who were mainly men. And they didn’t fare all that much worse with the women CFOs they encountered. Dare I say that sex really sells?

For those of us without the pedigree to even think of using this as a weapon, it becomes encumber upon us to figure out different strategies for marketing ourselves and our wares. Frankly, I don’t have an answer for anyone; if I did, I might be rich right now. But I will go this far in saying that I think I might do pretty well if I could take this little guy along with me. It’s not sexy, but it’s cute, and people tend to like cute as well. Who’s with me on the puppy?